Our core purpose at The Howard School is to provide every student with an excellent education. We firmly believe that an excellent education is central to securing the maximum life choices for our young people, ensuring they are prepared for the next phase of their journey.

We provide a challenging, interesting, and well-balanced inclusive curriculum that caters for the diverse range of abilities and needs of our students. Crucially, this is a truly bespoke curriculum, expertly designed by our dedicated Subject Leaders. Because we own the curriculum—shaping it specifically for the needs of our students—our students thrive as a result.

Our curriculum is intentionally designed to be fully inclusive. It effectively stretches the most able through rigorous content and challenge, while simultaneously providing targeted support for students facing barriers, such as those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) or those requiring the help of our Ascent programme.

Our strong curriculum is effectively implemented through High-Quality Inclusive Teaching delivered by our caring, committed staff. Our teachers ensure every lesson provides students with the key skills and knowledge required to succeed, continually raising our standards of academic success.

The excellent relationships fostered between our staff and students are central to this success. These strong connections allow all students, but particularly those facing barriers (such as those with SEND or requiring the help of our Ascent programme), to feel secure, confident, and supported enough to thrive

Furthermore, our Senior Leaders actively work to ensure that the curriculum keeps evolving. We continuously refine and improve our provision by staying abreast of new educational research and incorporating successful ideas and strategies drawn from other networks and highly achieving schools. This dynamic approach guarantees a relevant, cutting-edge, and inclusive learning experience for all.

At The Howard School, our unwavering commitment is to ensure every pupil achieves highly, securing the necessary qualifications and skills to confidently access the next phase of their education, employment, or training. We believe that true success lies in the achievement of all our students.

To achieve this, we have diligently developed a high-quality, inclusive curriculum that is continually adapted to meet the diverse needs of our pupils. This curriculum is brought to life by our excellent, caring staff body, who deliver it effectively, fostering an environment where every student feels supported and challenged.

We are dedicated to ensuring no student is left behind. On arrival, we implement bespoke intervention programmes to swiftly close any learning gaps and build strong foundational knowledge. This targeted approach ensures all pupils are ready to access the full curriculum.

Simultaneously, we stretch our most capable learners through the Aspire programme, offering enrichment and challenge to maximise their potential. For students facing challenges, our dedicated Ascent programme provides essential support to overcome barriers and ensure they achieve their best possible outcomes. This comprehensive approach guarantees that every student receives the support and challenge they need to succeed and realise their future aspirations.

At The Howard School, we uphold very high standards for behaviour and attendance, because this is fundamental to supporting all our students to ‘Be Good,’ achieve highly, and become the very best that they can be. High expectations create the necessary structure for success for every learner

Clear Expectations and Positive Environment

We achieve high standards through a clear and consistent approach, which includes:

• Clear Expectations and Boundaries: These are consistently reinforced through regular routines that ensure predictability and fairness across the school.

• Fostering Positive Relationships: Our staff prioritise building strong, positive relationships, ensuring everyone feels known, supported, and valued. This relational approach helps students become 'school ready' and act respectfully towards peers and staff.

We provide a safe, happy, and caring working environment in which each student is valued. We aim to foster compassion and respect for all cultures represented within our school community and the wider world.

We recognise that high attendance is directly linked to high achievement. Consistent attendance ensures students access the full curriculum and build essential knowledge sequentially. Our key strategy is to work diligently to maintain a warm and welcoming school that students genuinely want to attend.

This welcoming environment is supported by effective monitoring and intervention systems. These systems allow us to swiftly identify potential attendance barriers and provide bespoke, early support to help students maintain a high level of attendance, ensuring every learning opportunity is maximised.

Our core purpose is to ensure that we are effectively shaping the adults of the future, enabling our students to leave The Howard School ready to live happy and fulfilled lives.

We cultivate a strong sense of self-worth, ensuring our students value themselves and are inspired to be a force for good in the local and global community. We are dedicated to developing in each student a strong sense of moral values to prepare them for future responsibilities and opportunities.

This comprehensive development ensures students gain a profound understanding of themselves and enables them to become responsible citizens with a social, cultural, economic, and political awareness. We ensure students are aware of their rights and responsibilities, and crucially, have respect for the rights of others.

Underpinning this development is a robust, whole-school approach to wellbeing, expertly delivered by our caring and experienced pastoral staff. Our dedicated pastoral care systems are designed to provide consistent, personal support, ensuring students can easily access help whenever they need it.

We actively cultivate the resilience, confidence, and independence needed for students to navigate life’s challenges and setbacks successfully. Our staff work proactively to support both physical and mental health, fostering a nurturing environment where students feel safe and know that their well-being is a top priority. By offering strong pastoral guidance, we ensure all students are equipped with the emotional toolkit necessary to thrive in modern Britain and make a positive contribution to society.

The Howard School Sixth Form provides a welcoming, established, and large post-16 centre where every student can achieve their full potential. Our inclusive ethos and long-standing reputation for academic success make us the ideal place to transition from compulsory education and prepare for your future.

A key strength of our provision is the very broad range of courses on offer, encompassing both rigorous academic qualifications (such as A-Levels) and high-quality vocational pathways. This extensive choice ensures students can find the right fit for their ambitions and learning style. All courses are delivered by our team of very experienced, able teachers, who are experts in their fields. Their experience allows them to effectively cater for a diverse range of abilities and academic backgrounds, ensuring personalised support and challenge.

The relationships between staff and students are exceptionally strong. We build an environment based on trust and confidence, where every student knows they have a caring adult who is genuinely listening to them. This supportive network is crucial for success at a higher level of study. While we predominantly welcome students from our own Year 11, the Inclusive ethos of the Sixth Form allows students joining us from a range of different schools to quickly integrate and thrive. We equip all our students with the qualifications and maturity needed to successfully make their next step, whether that is university, higher-level apprenticeships, or skilled employment.

At The Howard School, our leadership and governance are defined by high expectations, high aspirations, and ambition for all pupils in the school. Our entire structure is designed to dismantle barriers and ensure that our core mission—every student achieving highly—is realised.

Leaders work diligently to remove barriers for both staff and students, ensuring frameworks like the High-Quality Inclusive Curriculum and Teaching, Inclusive Post-16 Provision, and Personal Development can be delivered seamlessly. This enables all students to thrive and maximise their achievement.

We support pupils to meet our high expectations through a culture of high visibility of staff, including leaders at all levels. Monitoring and support are meticulously planned so every part of the school day is calm, purposeful, and allows teachers to deliver a high-quality education, enabling all groups of students to ‘Be Hardworking’ 100% of the time to realise their full potential.

A key feature of the school is our strong multi-agency approach. We prioritise meetings and discussions that bring together all relevant expertise. This better supports us to remove barriers quickly and swiftly when we identify problems or issues and ensures students remain on track to achieve highly and thrive.

We recognise, value, and place great importance on working together with both external and internal networks. Strong positive working relationships between all stakeholders—staff, leaders, governors, parents, and carers—are paramount in ensuring that every student achieves highly, and barriers are identified and removed swiftly. To ensure we remain objective and to continue our journey of School Improvement we endeavour to use the very best practice from the most effective schools and organisations, nationally and globally, when deciding on school improvement strategies.